The Remake: On Night of the Living Dead (1990)

This May brings a remake of early 80s all-timer, Poltergeist, the latest in a long (long) line of cinematic reboots, retreads and more. By now, the ubiquity of reimaginings has rendered their existence less of a transgression than ever, with Poltergeist barely getting anyone up in arms. At the same time, the concept of remakes is an ever-hot point of contention among genre fans. Refusing to indulge in broad dismissal—and maybe in a bit of cautious optimism—we’ll spend this May looking at, and defending, some of the better redos in horror cinema. 

In the overcrowded and largely derided horror remake canon, Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead is an anomaly: a remake made for a totally justifiable reason. Typically, genre fans are quick to lambast Horror Reboot No. We’ve-Lost-Count and mourn the perceived death of originality and creativity, but with Savini’s Night of the Living Dead, released in October of 1990, only the ultra-cynical horror lovers can truly decry its existence. The rest of us horror die-hards, meanwhile, can’t knock the original Night’s team (director George A. Romero, writer John A. Russo and producer Russell Streiner) for reimagining their seminal 1968 masterwork of zombie cinema. They were just trying to finally make the hard-earned bucks they’d so rightfully deserved yet could never obtain for over 20 years.

The story is tragic legend within horror lore. Romero’s black-and-white Night of the Living Dead was originally titled Night of the Flesh Eaters, but that name already existed, prompting Romero, Russo and company to switch the title’s end portion to Living Dead. But when their little self-made, $114,000 film was released theatrically and became a midnight movie sensation, none of the filmmakers saw any real profits. It was a tough lesson learned by Romero and his partners, who, between them all, barely had enough film business experience to fill a How to Not Lose Out on Millions of Dollars self-help book’s prologue. Continental Distributing, the Walter Reade Theater’s distribution arm, had sent out Night of the Living Dead’s prints without any copyright notices. So like a bankrupt virus, the film’s many prints began circulating around the country and were endlessly duplicated. Night of the Living Dead became horror’s early answer to the Bébé’s Kids mantra of, “We don’t die, we multiply!” And Romero, Russo, Streiner and everyone else involved with Night of the Living Dead continued to figuratively kick themselves in their asses for the next two decades.

If you’re a fan of Romero’s films, or even just a Night of the Living Dead loyalist, the fact that Pittsburgh’s cinematic pride-and-joy and his colleagues had been so financially screwed over should both infuriate you and leave you wanting them to cash out. Which is why, whether you’ve seen it or not, Night of the Living Dead ’90 is a tough remake to hate. It’s redemption exemplified. The whole Night ’68 brain-trust reunited for it, with Romero writing the script, Russo and Streiner producing, and longtime Romero friend—and the twisted makeup effects mastermind behind Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Creepshow—Tom Savini stepping behind the camera for the first time in his long, illustrious career. It’s as pure of a revision as one could ask for, a near gang’s-all-here replication of the 1968 production.

Don’t trust any reviews of Savini’s Night of the Living Dead that label it as a lazy shot-for-shot remake or an uninspired carbon copy of its predecessor. You can call it a cash-grab, of course, since its makers have made no mystery about its dollar-sign-driven origins. But, again, who can blame them for that? And thankfully, they loved their 1968-born baby too much to do what many would eventually do with horror staples. The critics who’ve dubbed Night of the Living Dead ’90 as anything less than a first-class zombie movie/inventive remake either didn’t pay attention to the movie while watching it or, god forbid, haven’t actually seen Romero’s Night, and, thus, don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. They pulled a “Rex Reed reviewing V/H/S/2” blunder decades before the New York Observer’s maestro of hack criticism’s July 2013 folly.

The pleasure in watching the Night of the Living Dead remake comes from Savini and company’s tireless excitement in upending the original movie’s fans’ expectations. They wisely didn’t try to recapture Romero’s film’s thematic weight and dramatic elegance. Released at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and fueled by its black lead actor, not-so-subtle lynching imagery and aggressive counter-culture-devouring-the-status-quo subtext, Romero’s film bravely and expertly tapped into that society’s unease—it made them confront harsh realities while soiling their undergarments and wincing at staged cannibalism. For the remake, Savini knew how disastrous it’d be to attempt to modernize Night’s headline-conscious spirit, so he focused on making his Night less in-your-face and grim and more loosely entertaining.

The only identical aspects shared between the movies are their characters (both films use the same names and physical looks) and set-up. In both, seven people are trapped inside of a farmhouse, having barricaded themselves in by nailing wooden boards over the windows, as a growing horde of zombies surrounds the property; personalities clash, terrible decisions are made and, as the night progresses, their body-count decreases significantly. Yet that’s where the similarities end.

Savini’s Night of the Living Dead is unabashedly dedicated to audience manipulation. He makes that much clear from jump. The opening’s the same, with mousy Barbara (Patricia Tallman) and her obnoxious brother, Johnny (Bill Moseley), visiting their late mother’s grave and being interrupted by a staggering man in a black suit. In Romero’s film, that man is the inaugural zombie and an iconic horror figure; in Savini’s, however, he’s a misdirection. The staggering man apologies for bothering the siblings and walks away, but stays in the frame long enough for the audience to see him turn around and make viewers think, “Okay, now he’s going to attack them!” And then, wham, a hideous, lesion-covered zombie barrels into the shot’s foreground, tackles Barbara, and the horror begins.

The first time you see it, Savini’s Night’s opening sequence is a real jolt. It’s so unexpected that you even overlook how it’s kind of idiotic. Lapses in logic are easily forgivable, of course, when the filmmaker’s execution is joyously enthusiastic and knowingly calculated—that’s Evil Dead-era Sam Raimi 101. And like Raimi, Savini and Romero are clearly having loads of fun. The madcap energy in Savini’s opener is undeniable, and it crescendos into the darkly comedic entrance of a second zombie who’s nearly buck-naked and sports a vicious autopsy scar down its back. Romero’s film’s graveyard zombie looks like a stuffed-shirt accountant who’s wearing layers of his wife’s face makeup and stumbles around like he’s trying not to wake her up after a night of drinking with co-workers; Savini’s pair of ghouls, on the other hand, snarl and grab as if they’re fighting their way to the front of an open bar. Whereas Bill Hinzman’s was a funeral, their Night is a party. Why else do you think the second zombie’s rocking his birthday suit?

By completely perverting Night’s beginning, Savini also conditions you to anticipate anything and everything. It’s the foreplay before the film’s myriad climaxes. Instead of a helpless and essentially catatonic non-participant, Barbara’s turned into a tough, Ripley-esque heroine; no longer a borderline bigot, Harry (Tom Towles) is merely a slick-tongued yet slang-deficient asshole who insults people by calling them “lame-brains” and “yo-yos.” That mangled corpse at the top of the staircase is now joined by an inexplicably moving severed hand and an obese ghoul who topples over the railing as if there’s a Free Intestines buffet waiting below.

The most fascinating tweak is Savini’s handling of the original film’s classic matricide scene, in which zombified youngster Karen opts to slaughter her mother, Helen, with a trough over simply eating her alive. Savini downplays that brutal and horrifically shocking kill to an off-screen biting of Helen’s neck and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spray of blood on a wall-bound trough. It’s his way of cleverly betraying his audience’s trust. If you’re watching a Night of the Living Dead remake after you’ve seen Romero and Savini’s wickedly extreme gore in films like Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, you’re waiting for that trough moment to happen just to see Helen’s entrails spill out, but you don’t get that—you get Tom “The King of Splatter” Savini being frugal with the red stuff.

Its minimized gore notwithstanding, Savini’s Night of the Living Dead actually isn’t that much different from everyone’s favorite remake of a George Romero classic, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. Both films take Romero’s original conceit, strip it down to its essence, and then run wild all around its edges, and, to Savini’s film’s slight detriment, neither one is particularly scary.

Night’s lack of terror is directly connected to the new Barbara. Judith O’Dea’s performance in Romero’s film is somewhat comatose, but that’s by design—by witnessing her constantly petrified state, the audience has no choice but to acknowledge the film’s scariness. But Tallman’s Barbara points out the story’s obvious flaws, like how slow the zombies are and how effortlessly the living folks can maneuver around them towards safety if they’d just sack up already. It’s tough be all that scared as a viewer if the main protagonist herself isn’t.

And, in Savini’s film’s defense, there’s nothing wrong with that. Had filmmakers independent from Romero’s original regime made this first Night of the Living Dead remake (sorry to remind you but, yes, Night of the Living Dead 3D really is a thing), its muted scares would be an issue, since newcomers daring to remix a gold horror standard better be able to maximize what made the previous film so effective. Romero, Russo and Streiner already gave audiences the willies back in 1968, though—this time, they just wanted to wild out. Night of the Living Dead’s originators treated the remake as a kind of funhouse ride for the fans who’d kept them going when those non-existent royalty checks never did.

In a way, the filmmakers who never got paid were paying it forward.

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Matt Barone is a film-obsessed writer and editor of TribecaFilm.com. When he’s not contributing to outlets like The Dissolve and Birth.Movies.Death, he endlessly weighs in on all things horror on Twitter.